[✔️] May 7, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
Richard at CredoandScreed.com
Sat May 7 08:25:56 EDT 2022
/*May 7, 2022*/
/[ Albuquerque warnings ]/
https://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Northern-New-Mexico-weather.jpg
*A multi-day critical fire weather event will impact mainly New Mexico
*through the next few days, and also much of SE Colorado, eastern
Arizona and the Texas panhandle/west TX. A combination of strong winds,
low humidity, & warm temperatures can contribute to extreme fire behavior
https://twitter.com/NWS/status/1522674443247566848
- -
*National Weather Service*
@NWS
Always follow the advice of local and state authorities when asked to
evacuate because of wildfire spread. Think now about what you and your
family would do in that situation, so valuable seconds are saved.
https://twitter.com/NWS/status/1522674443247566848
/- -/
Safety
National Program
*Wildfire Weather Safety*
https://www.weather.gov/safety/wildfire
- -
[interactive map of current US fires ]
*InciWeb - Incident Information System*
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/
- -
/[ tornado clip Texas ]/
https://twitter.com/VinceWaelti/status/1522729110790942721
https://www.seethestorm.live/
- -
/[humorous dog picture driving past the thunderstorm ]/
https://twitter.com/spahn711/status/1522585134788136961/photo/1
https://twitter.com/NWS/status/1522674443247566848?/
/
/- -
/
/[ just one of many challenges to come ]/
*Texas Preps for Hot Temperatures; Hope the Grid Holds On*
It's going to be incredibly hot this weekend in the Lone Star State.
Molly Taft - - May 6, 2022
- -
Buckle up, Texas. Your Mother’s Day weekend could get sweaty—and you
might want to prepare for your power to be on the fritz, too. The state
is one of more than a dozen across the U.S. set to see potentially
record-breaking temperatures during an extensive heatwave this weekend.
“It is pretty rare to get a heat wave that is looking this extreme in
early May. Usually, this is the kind of heat that we see in July or
August,” Stephen Harrison, a meteorologist for the National Weather
Service in San Angelo, Texas, told CNN.
And it could get very hot in Texas this weekend. In the Dallas/Fort
Worth area, temperatures could hit 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36.1 degrees
Celsius) both Saturday and Sunday—potentially breaking temperature
records last set in 1918 and 1933—with some areas set to see
temperatures as high as the low 100s Fahrenheit (between 37.5 and 40
degrees Celsius). The normal temperature highs for the region at this
time of year are around 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27.2 degrees Celsius).
In Lubbock, the National Weather Service warned that temperatures could
reach between 94 and 96 degrees Fahrenheit (34.4 and 35.6 degrees
Celsius) on Friday, well above the area’s normal temperature for May 6
of 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27.2 degrees Celsius), and sneaking towards
its record high of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius). Parts
of Texas are also under a fire watch thanks to the extreme temperatures;
to the west, much of New Mexico is suffering through disastrous wildfires...
- -
While the cold snap last year did incredible harm, heatwaves, which
science shows are juiced up by climate change, are one of the most
deadly forms of extreme weather. ERCOT had a couple close calls last
summer during heatwaves—let’s hope it can keep hanging on through this on
https://gizmodo.com/texas-preps-for-hot-temperatures-hope-ercots-grid-hold-1848891504
/[ US and Canada in energy spat ]/
*A Fight Over America’s Energy Future Erupts on the Canadian Border*
Power companies, conservationists, local residents and two U.S. states
are mired in an acrimonious dispute about hydroelectricity from Quebec.
By David Gelles - - May 6, 2022
- -
RADISSON, Quebec — Hundreds of feet below a remote forest near Hudson
Bay, Serge Abergel inspected the spinning turbines at the heart of the
biggest subterranean power plant in the world, a massive facility that
converts the water of the La Grande River into a current of renewable
electricity strong enough to power a midsize city.
- -
Yet today, work on the $1 billion project is at a standstill.
Over the past few years, an unlikely coalition of residents,
conservationists and Native Americans waged a rowdy campaign funded by
rival energy companies to quash the effort. The opponents won a major
victory in November, when Maine voters passed a measure that halted the
project. Following a legal fight, proponents appealed to the state
Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on the case on May 10 about
whether such a referendum is legal...
- -
But if the NECEC is scrapped, it will represent a major setback for
those working to wean the United States off fossil fuels, according to
independent energy experts. Development of a utility-scale clean energy
project requires time and money, and the prospect that it could be
killed by voters — even after it is vetted and permitted by government
regulators — would inject a level of risk that could scare away investment.
“As hard as it is to explain and defend a project like this, it is so
easy for people to come and torpedo it, and they don’t even have to tell
the truth,” said Mr. Abergel. “If you can put a stop to these long term
projects a year before they’re completed, it raises big questions about
the energy transition and how we’re going to get it done.”...
- -
Critics of hydropower contend that the large-scale flooding required to
create reservoirs leads to emissions of methane, a potent planet warming
gas.
And they say the overall climate benefits will be minimal because Hydro
Quebec would not be generating new clean energy for the New England
grid, just reducing the amount of hydropower it sells to other markets.
A better solution would be the installation of rooftop solar across New
England, the Natural Resources Council of Maine said, while other Maine
residents point to what they say is a superior proposal to bring
Canadian hydropower into the U.S. through an underground line in Vermont...
- -
After a day spent touring the generating station in Radisson, Mr.
Abergel boarded a small turboprop plane for a three-hour flight south to
Montreal and reflected on a project that appears on the verge of
collapse. From the air, he looked out on hundreds of square miles of
uninhabited land, much of which had been flooded decades ago to create
the massive reservoirs that power Hydro Quebec’s subterranean turbines...
- -
Many analysts, and even supporters of the project, acknowledge that the
court could side with the opposition, dooming the NECEC and forcing
Massachusetts back to the drawing board. That is a scenario that would
cost Hydro Quebec and Avangrid a small fortune, and could have
far-reaching implications, spelling trouble for other efforts to rapidly
deploy more clean energy across the country.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/climate/hydro-quebec-maine-clean-energy.html
/[ harsh reality and transformation - exhortation to positivism ] /
*Climate change will transform how we live, but these tech and policy
experts see reason for optimism*
It’s easy to feel pessimistic when scientists around the world are
warning that climate change has advanced so far, it’s now inevitable
that societies will either transform themselves or be transformed. But
as two of the authors of a recent international climate report, we also
see reason for optimism.
The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
discuss changes ahead, but they also describe how existing solutions can
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help people adjust to impacts of
climate change that can’t be avoided.
The problem is that these solutions aren’t being deployed fast enough.
In addition to push-back from industries, people’s fear of change has
helped maintain the status quo.
To slow climate change and adapt to the damage already underway, the
world will have to shift how it generates and uses energy, transports
people and goods, designs buildings and grows food. That starts with
embracing innovation and change.
*Fear of change can lead to worsening change*
From the industrial revolution to the rise of social media, societies
have undergone fundamental changes in how people live and understand
their place in the world.
Some transformations are widely regarded as bad, including many of those
connected to climate change. For example, about half the world’s coral
reef ecosystems have died because of increasing heat and acidity in the
oceans. Island nations like Kiribati and coastal communities, including
in Louisiana and Alaska, are losing land into rising seas.
Other transformations have had both good and bad effects. The industrial
revolution vastly raised standards of living for many people, but it
spawned inequality, social disruption and environmental destruction.
People often resist transformation because their fear of losing what
they have is more powerful than knowing they might gain something
better. Wanting to retain things as they are – known as status quo bias
– explains all sorts of individual decisions, from sticking with
incumbent politicians to not enrolling in retirement or health plans
even when the alternatives may be rationally better.
This effect may be even more pronounced for larger changes. In the past,
delaying inevitable change has led to transformations that are
unnecessarily harsh, such as the collapse of some 13th-century
civilizations in what is now the U.S. Southwest. As more people
experience the harms of climate change firsthand, they may begin to
realize that transformation is inevitable and embrace new solutions.
*A mix of good and bad*
The IPCC reports make clear that the future inevitably involves more and
larger climate-related transformations. The question is what the mix of
good and bad will be in those transformations.
If countries allow greenhouse gas emissions to continue at a high rate
and communities adapt only incrementally to the resulting climate
change, the transformations will be mostly forced and mostly bad.
For example, a riverside town might raise its levees as spring flooding
worsens. At some point, as the scale of flooding increases, such
adaptation hits its limits. The levees necessary to hold back the water
may become too expensive or so intrusive that they undermine any benefit
of living near the river. The community may wither away.
The riverside community could also take a more deliberate and
anticipatory approach to transformation. It might shift to higher
ground, turn its riverfront into parkland while developing affordable
housing for people who are displaced by the project, and collaborate
with upstream communities to expand landscapes that capture floodwaters.
Simultaneously, the community can shift to renewable energy and
electrified transportation to help slow global warming.
*Optimism resides in deliberate action*
The IPCC reports include numerous examples that can help steer such
positive transformation.
For example, renewable energy is now generally less expensive than
fossil fuels, so a shift to clean energy can often save money.
Communities can also be redesigned to better survive natural hazards
through steps such as maintaining natural wildfire breaks and building
homes to be less susceptible to burning.
Land use and the design of infrastructure, such as roads and bridges,
can be based on forward-looking climate information. Insurance pricing
and corporate climate risk disclosures can help the public recognize
hazards in the products they buy and companies they support as investors.
No one group can enact these changes alone. Everyone must be involved,
including governments that can mandate and incentivize changes,
businesses that often control decisions about greenhouse gas emissions,
and citizens who can turn up the pressure on both.
*Transformation is inevitable*
Efforts to both adapt to and mitigate climate change have advanced
substantially in the last five years, but not fast enough to prevent the
transformations already underway.
Doing more to disrupt the status quo with proven solutions can help
smooth these transformations and create a better future in the process.
—
This article was written by Robert Lempert, Professor of Policy
Analysis, Pardee RAND Graduate School, and Elisabeth Gilmore, Associate
Professor of Climate Change, Technology and Policy, Carleton University.
It was originally published on The Conversation.
https://pvbuzz.com/climate-change-transform-how-we-live/
[ Toronto Star excerpts from book on climate anxiety from psychologist
Britt Wray ]
*The next global mental-health crisis is about climate change*
COVID created a second, mental-health pandemic. The one sparked by
climate change will be worse. And already young people are the ones hit
hardest
By BRITT WRAY - -Excerpt from *_Generation Dread_*
Thu., April 28, 2022
Our study also showed that the psychological distress young people
experience isn’t just about the degrading environment. Rather, it is
linked to perceptions of government betrayal and being lied to by
leaders who are taking inadequate climate action while pretending
otherwise...
- -
One study found that the only people typing “climate anxiety” into
their search bars were in Canada, the United Kingdom, America, and
Australia. In the U.S., the conversation about climate anxiety being
an unbearably white phenomenon has really got off the ground. In
Scientific American, professor of Environmental Studies at Humboldt
State University Sarah Jaquette Ray writes, “Climate anxiety can
operate like white fragility, sucking up all the oxygen in the room
and devoting resources toward appeasing the dominant group.”
But it would be a mistake to conclude that this term isn’t
applicable in the Global South, period. Jennifer Uchendu is a young
Nigerian climate activist who has studied eco-anxiety in London as
well as her hometown of Lagos. She sees clear differences between
how young Brits and their Nigerian peers relate to eco-anxiety.
Young people in the U.K., she says, often feel guilty about being
citizens of an industrialized nation that’s making the problem
worse. Young Nigerians, on the other hand, often feel angry about
the environmental injustices and climate impacts they’re already
experiencing, as well as fatigued by the issue.
However, learning that “eco-anxiety” was a term brought Jennifer
massive relief. It explained why she was burning out on her activism
with SustyVibes, the environmental organization she founded, and why
she was losing faith in her work. She told me, “Every time I talk
about eco-anxiety on social media, young people can immediately
relate to it. I remember when I came back home and talked to our
volunteers, they were like, ‘Oh my God, it has a name, it’s a thing,
people have figured it out!’ And that was exactly how I felt in the
U.K., realizing that this is actually valid. … I’m not crazy, I’m
not overthinking, I’m not taking it too far. This is a real problem.”
I used to think about the mental health impacts of the planetary
health crisis in binary terms, with a clear separation between those
who lose their livelihoods or homes or cultural traditions as a
landscape erodes, and the rest on the sidelines, who feel anxious
from reading about those events in the news. But as my research
piled up, the porous nature of this imagined divide became clear.
The stress of what’s happening to the natural world is living inside
people’s bodies. Disasters that affect people directly exacerbate
mental health disorders; droughts, hurricanes, floods and wildfires
have been shown, time and again, to spike post-traumatic stress
disorder, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and other mental
problems.
Of course, it is important not to minimize the vast differences in
how climate trauma manifests. But eco-distress can impair
functioning even if one is far from the front lines— causing
physical symptoms such as sleep disturbance and panic attacks.
Climate-aware psychiatrist and historian Gary Belkin put it to me
this way: “The whole frickin’ world is a disaster zone, a crime
scene, there are no sidelines.” Though some of us are more
privileged and protected, and will continue to be because it is not
a level playing field, we are all on the field.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, for the layperson, mental health was
largely seen as a problem that individuals must grapple with inside
their own personal orbit. Poor mental health hasn’t been principally
understood as the consequence of how we grow the economy, fund
public health services, or fail to take care of one another. But the
pandemic has made us notice something new.
People everywhere — and their governments — are starting to see
mental health as a public health issue in a way they hadn’t before.
As populations were forced to stay at home to avoid the virus in the
streets, millions around the world experienced pervasive anxiety
about getting infected, losing family members, and being separated
from all that had once felt normal.
As with climate change, young people have been the most susceptible
to despair during the pandemic. After four months of lockdown, a
survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
found that a quarter of 18-to- 24-year-olds in the United States had
seriously considered suicide. A UNICEF survey of 8,000 young people
in Latin America and the Caribbean found more than a quarter
experienced anxiety related to COVID-19, while more than a quarter
of 70,000 French students surveyed experienced depression. This
mounting evidence led the New York Times to call the situation a
“mental health pandemic” that should be treated as seriously as
containing the virus.
And yet the pandemic is a mere dress rehearsal for what scientists
anticipate the climate crisis will do to our well-being. We are told
to expect even more daunting existential challenges to come our way
in the next decades, which will affect the resilience of our
communities and our own interior worlds. We cannot afford to be
caught unawares as we were with the COVID-19 pandemic, when at its
inception mental health was not a political priority and chronically
underfunded. A sober look at the pandemic presents us with an
opportunity to better mitigate the mental health impacts of a
warming world.
When we recognize the climate crisis for what it is — a collective
trauma — we can begin to invest in our own mental health and
well-being in relation to it. And the sooner we begin this process,
the better, before people are even more drained from the stressful
news and directly felt disasters of the day. We are all at risk of
becoming traumatized by what is happening, and we would be wise to
recognize that anything that helps others is a way of also helping
oneself.
An adapted excerpt from Generation Dread by Britt Wray. Copyright © 2022
Britt Wray. Published by Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random
House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All
rights reserved.
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/analysis/2022/04/28/the-next-global-mental-health-crisis-is-about-climate-change.html
/[ - free Endnotes and Appendix - ] /
*How to Prepare for Climate Change*
A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos
By David Pogue
End notes available
https://d1hbl61hovme3a.cloudfront.net/assets_us/how-to-prepare-for-climate-change-endnotes.pdf
Appendix
Your Carbon Footprint
*HOW TO PREPARE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE IS PRIMARILY ABOUT*
adaptation: changes we can make to accommodate the new climate
and its effects.
But there’s another response to the climate crisis: mitigation. That means
taking steps to minimize the worsening of the climate.
At this point, we need to adapt and mitigate, hard and fast. The more
mitigation humans do, the less we’ll have to adapt.
https://d1hbl61hovme3a.cloudfront.net/assets_us/your-carbon-footprint-1.28.21.pdf
https://www.simonandschuster.com/p/how-to-prepare-for-climate-change-bonus-files
/[The news archive - looking back at our history of confusion ]/
/*May 7, 2001*/
In a response to a question about whether President George W. Bush would
encourage energy conservation, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer
states: "That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American
way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect
the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one.
And we have a bounty of resources in this country. What we need to do
is make certain that we're able to get those resources in an efficient
way, in a way that also emphasizes protecting the environment and
conservation, into the hands of consumers so they can make the choices
that they want to make as they live their lives day to day."
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/briefings/20010507.html
=======================================
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